All GRE Subject Test: Literature in English Resources
Example Questions
Example Question #91 : Contexts Of Prose
Which of the following is not another novel by the author of Blood Meridian?
The Road
All the Pretty Horses
Freedom
No Country For Old Men
Suttree
Freedom
McCarthy wrote The Road (2006), No Country For Old Men (2005), All the Pretty Horses (1992), and Suttree (1979). He did not, however, write Freedom; that title is a 2010 novel by Jonathan Franzen.
Example Question #92 : Contexts Of Prose
Who is the author of Blood Meridian?
Philip Roth
Cormac McCarthy
Raymond Carver
Jonathan Franzen
Raymond Chandler
Cormac McCarthy
Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West (1985) is Cormac McCarthy’s fifth novel.
Jonathan Franzen is the author of The Twenty-Seventh City (1988), Phillip Roth is the author of The Ghostwriter (1979), Raymond Chandler is the author of The High Window (1942), and Raymond Carver is the author of Cathedral (1983).
Example Question #93 : Contexts Of Prose
Which genre does Blood Meridian belong to?
Southern gothic
Western
Picaresque
Magic Realism
Künstlerroman
Western
Blood Meridian (1985) is set in the Mexican-American borderlands in the late 1840s and early 1850s and concerns the adventures of a gang of scalp hunters. It is characterized as a Modern or Revisionist Western.
Example Question #94 : Contexts Of Prose
Which of the following is an unfinished novel by the author of Infinite Jest?
The 120 Days of Sodom
The Mystery of Edwin Drood
Billy Budd
The Pale King
Dubrovsky
The Pale King
The Pale King was posthumously published in 2011 by David Foster Wallace’s wife, Karen Green, and editor, Michael Pietsch, and was a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Billy Budd (1924) is by Herman Melville, The 120 Days of Sodom (1904) is by the Marquis de Sade, The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870) is by Charles Dickens, Dubrovsky (1841) is by Alexander Pushkin. All of these novels were also published posthumously.
Example Question #92 : Contexts Of Prose
Who is the author of Infinite Jest?
John Updike
Jonathan Franzen
Philip Roth
David Foster Wallace
Jonathan Safran Foer
David Foster Wallace
Infinite Jest (1996) is David Foster Wallace’s second of three novels. It concerns various characters at a junior tennis academy and drug addicts in a nearby substance-abuse recovery center and is written in a fragmentary, experimental form. The novel contains at least 200 pages of end notes.
Jonathan Franzen is the author of Strong Motion (1992), Jonathan Safran Foer is the author of Everything is Illuminated (2002), Phillip Roth is the author of Goodbye Columbus (1959), and John Updike is the author of Toward the End of Time (1997).
Notably, in his 1997 review of Toward the End of Time Foster Wallace classified Updike and Roth as two of America's "great male narcissists."
Example Question #516 : Gre Subject Test: Literature In English
During what decade was Infinite Jest published?
1970s
2010s
2000s
1960s
1990s
1990s
Infinite Jest (1996) was begun in the late 1980s and published in 1996.
Example Question #517 : Gre Subject Test: Literature In English
During what decade was The Corrections published?
1990s
2000s
1980s
1960s
1970s
2000s
The Corrections was published in 2001 and received the National Book Award the same year.
Example Question #25 : Contexts Of American Prose After 1925
Which of the following is not another novel by the author of Portnoy’s Complaint?
Everyman
Bullet Park
Sabbath’s Theater
American Pastoral
The Human Stain
Bullet Park
Philip Roth published American Pastoral in 1997, The Human Stain in 2000, Everyman in 2006, and Sabbath’s Theater in 1995. Bullet Park is a 1969 work by the American writer John Cheever.
Example Question #519 : Gre Subject Test: Literature In English
During what decade was Portnoy’s Complaint published?
1990s
1960s
1970s
1980s
1950s
1960s
Portnoy’s Complaint was published in 1969, making it Roth’s fourth published novel.
Example Question #41 : Contexts Of American Prose
The author of The Corrections also wrote which of the following novels?
Invisible Man
The Bluest Eye
Freedom
The Broom of the System
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Freedom
Jonathan Franzen published Freedom in 2010. The Broom of the System (1987) is by David Foster Wallace, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005) is by Jonathan Safran Foer, The Bluest Eye (1970) is by Toni Morrison, and Invisible Man (1952) is by Ralph Ellison.
All GRE Subject Test: Literature in English Resources
